NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER ORAL HISTORY PROJECT EDITED ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPT MICHAEL L. COATS INTERVIEWED BY JENNIFER ROSS-NAZZAL HOUSTON, TEXAS – 16 APRIL 2008 ROSS-NAZZAL: Today is April 16th, 2008. This oral history with Mike Coats is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas. Jennifer Ross-Nazzal is the interviewer, and she is assisted by Rebecca Wright. Several months ago you participated in the NASA at 50 Oral History Project. You described your career as a naval aviator. I thought today we would pick up with that history and start by talking about that phone call you received from George [W.S.] Abbey in 1978. Would you share those memories with us? COATS: Sure, yes, that was obviously a very special day because it happened to be my birthday too, January 16th. They had announced on the news the night before that they were going to announce the first class of astronauts in a dozen years. I think the last previous class had been 1967, scientist astronauts. But we were the first Shuttle class, so that was a big deal. They knew they were going to have the first females and the first minority astronauts. The news had a lot of coverage about that. Of course we had come down for interviews over the previous six months. I'd been in the first group of 20 back in August of '77. Then I got all excited after I came down and got a chance to see what the Johnson Space Center was all about. I really wanted to be selected then, even though the Navy was really good to me and I loved flying on aircraft carriers. I really wanted to be selected. It was a big deal. We knew we were going to get a phone call. We thought it was just going to be if you got a phone call that meant you were selected. We didn't realize they were 16 April 2008 1 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Michael L. Coats calling everybody, even the ones that weren't selected. I was at Monterey [California] at the Naval Postgraduate School, and everybody in school seemed to know that I had applied and that there was going to be an announcement that day. Sure enough, I'm shaving at about 6:30 in the morning and the phone rang. Fortunately I didn't cut myself, so I put the razor down and ran across the bed, almost stepped on my wife to get to the phone. I didn't want to be late; didn't want it to quit ringing. I got over there and a voice said, “Would you hold for George Abbey,” and I thought that was good news, that George was calling. So I was pretty excited. Fortunately George came on and said in his own mumbling way, “Are you still interested in coming to work here at the Johnson Space Center?” I said, “Yes sir.” “Good, we'd like to have you down here.” That was about the extent of it. He did say, “Now, you can't tell anybody until 1:00 Eastern Time, when they're going to have a big press conference and an announcement. You can't mention it to anybody.” I said, “Yes sir.” I was all excited and immediately called my parents—which is a good thing—my parents and my wife's parents. My parents were in Colorado, and my wife's parents were back in Illinois. When they did have the announcements, the media came down on them very quickly, and they enjoyed that. They got a lot of attention for that. Then I had to go to class, graduate school. I walked in, and the class was there and the professor was there and everybody's looking at me like, “Well?” I walked in and all I could do was smile. They said, “Enough said, congratulations.” Big round of applause. That was nice. I didn't say a word, but the word got out very quickly there. In fact they had a nice party that night at one of the houses. We lived in a housing area at the postgraduate school, so we had a nice party, and it was really a pretty special group of folks. 16 April 2008 2 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Michael L. Coats We knew we were going to get a call. What I didn't know was everybody got the call, even if they weren't selected. He could have easily come on and said, “Well, we'd like you to apply next time.” So I was delighted. That was a nice birthday present to have. I think he put the secretary back on the line to tell me they wanted everybody down there later in the month, here at JSC, to have a big press conference and unveiling. I actually remember I had to leave Monterey a couple of days early because I couldn't get a flight out if I didn't leave early. I guess I could have driven up to San Francisco [California], but I'm not sure it crossed my mind. I was the first one of the 35 to get down here. George Abbey and Dick [Richard H.] Truly took me out to dinner at the Pour House with their wives, which I remember to this day, because Dick's wife started complaining about the Houston weather and how miserable it was here. George's wife at the time basically said, “Well, you can't do anything about it, why complain about it?” They got so heated in their argument. I remember George and Dick were turned away looking at the wall, and I'm between these two wives who are yelling at each other, and the manager actually came over and asked us to leave. So my first night here at JSC we got kicked out of a restaurant with George and Dick Truly, who later became NASA Administrator. That was my welcome-to-Houston moment. I think my wife was excited that I was excited. She wasn't really excited about this astronaut business, because, as she put it, she thought all astronauts got divorced and she wasn't real crazy about that. I don't think the divorce rate's any different than society in general, it just gets a little more attention sometimes. She wasn't quite as excited as I was, but she was happy that I was happy. So that was a good day, nice birthday present, 30 years ago. ROSS-NAZZAL: How old were you at that point? 16 April 2008 3 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Michael L. Coats COATS: Just turned 32. It's funny, because at the Strategic Management Council we just had with Mike [Michael D.] Griffin and all the Center directors and mission directors yesterday, we had some of the young people, the Gen Y people, come in and talk. Mike basically said, “Well, the group that took us to the Moon in Apollo were in their late 20s, early 30s. If you go back and look at the men that walked on the Moon, most of them were in their early to mid-30s.” The flight directors, like Glynn [S.] Lunney, he used Glynn Lunney as an example, was 32 when he was an Apollo flight director, when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Now the average age of the JSC workforce is about 46. So that was a different time. Of course they were just starting the agency, so they were taking kids right out of college. It was a young group of people that did amazing things. Pretty astounding actually. ROSS-NAZZAL: Would you tell us about that orientation that you went through when you were called down to Houston with your class? What are your recollections of that time period? COATS: I remember sitting up on the stage over in the Teague Auditorium, all 35 of us up there. Of course the six women and the three African-American astronauts were getting all the attention, which was great. The rest of us really appreciated that a lot. I’m trying to remember what else they did during the orientation. It's an introduction to the world out there. We'd obviously spent a week down here before, when we were getting our physicals and interviews, so we knew about JSC. But they did sit us down and say, “Okay, you're going to report the first of July, and what do you need in the way of help and support.” I don't even remember how long we were down here. It wasn't very long. Mostly they just wanted to get everybody together. 16 April 2008 4 Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Michael L. Coats They did have us sign some pictures. We all had these pictures of what they thought the Space Shuttle was going to look like. We all got to sign some of those pictures. We signed each, like 35 pictures, so each one of us could have that group photo. It's nice to look at it, because we've lost a lot of classmates over the years. I don't remember much else about that visit down here, other than the press conference. We did get some individual interviews out there, but I remember my parents were really excited that the media was knocking at their door very quickly. They got to be on local TV up there in Colorado.